Summer is Terrible

In honor of those who dread this worst of seasons

When ranking the seasons, we can all have our opinions about which is the best, as long as we agree to place summer last. Summer is terrible and I’m tired of people telling me otherwise.

There are two main problems with summer. The first is that it’s hot. Unless you’re sitting poolside with a cold drink at the ready, being hot is awful. Being cold sucks too, but being hot is worse than being cold for the simple reason that it’s easier to put on a coat than to take off your skin.

The second, worse problem is that we’ve been conditioned to believe that summer is some magical time-out from life in which we’re supposed to cram a year’s worth of “fun.” I’m putting “fun” in quotes because “fun” summer stuff is almost never actually fun.

I don’t want to attend a goddamned music festival, for example. Standing in a blazing field for nine hours watching 30 Seconds to Mars not only sounds not fun, it sounds anti-fun. An unending nightmare of sweat, warm beer, sunstroke, and Port-A-Potties. I can understand music festivals being enjoyable if you add drugs, but maybe I could just do the drugs at home, in air-conditioning, with the stereo on, while shitting in a proper toilet? Doesn’t that sound so much better?

Terrible. (Photo by Derick McKinney on Unsplash)

Nor do I want to go to the beach. The beach is awful because sand is awful on your skin and saltwater is awful in your mouth. Has anybody ever been comfortable at the beach? No. Eating food at the beach is disgusting because no matter what you do to prevent it, you’re going to be eating sand. It doesn’t matter how careful you are with your shitty, soggy sandwich, it’s going to get sand in it and that sand is going in your mouth. What’re you even supposed to do at the beach? Play that paddle game that’s not even a proper game? It’s just two people knocking a ball back and forth with those cheap wooden rackets that have the same texture as the spoons they give you to eat Italian ices.

(By the way, Italian ices are only available in the summer and they, too, are terrible.)

Summer vacations with your children are also horrendous. The only thing kids want to do on their vacations is go to amusement parks. Feel like standing on a three-hour line? No? Too bad for you, stupid, because that’s what your kids want to do. They don’t care how long the line is, they’re going to stand on it because they want to ride some spinny, upside-downy torture machine and the whole reason you’re even at the stupid amusement park is to make “family memories,” so you wait on line with them to ride the ride because you’re a “good parent.” For a typical family of four, you’re going to spend hundreds of dollars for the privilege of seeing which of you is going to throw up. Hint: it’s going to be you. You’re going to throw up. Because you haven’t been to a stupid amusement park in twenty-five years and you didn’t realize that, over the course of those years, your inner ear stopped working.

Awful. (Photo by Somruthai Keawjan on Unsplash)

Summers are so much worse if you have small kids. Because they want to be entertained. So you have to devote all your waking hours to filling all of their waking hours. Maybe you can throw them in some sports camp for a week or two, but then what? You can’t just shove them outside for the day the way our parents used to do because, apparently, it’s dangerous to have packs of unsupervised ten-year-olds roaming the streets. It’s ludicrous. In any given group of children, you have to figure that most of them will make it home unscathed. Why not just play the odds? But no, in addition to taking care of ourselves, we’re supposed to take care of them, too? Absurd. They should be in school all year round. Or, if not school, then someplace where we parents don’t have to deal with them. Dealing with our children shouldn’t be our job.

Schools destroyed summer. The reason we feel so much pressure to get all of our fun in during the literal worst time of the year to have fun is because of school summer vacations. It’s school that conditioned us to elevate summer to an outsized role in our lives. Those three, supposedly carefree months have caused me so much anxiety over the course of my life. First, when I was a kid, and I really did look forward to summer, I felt the anxiety of my summer vacation frittering away as I lay on the couch, bored out of my skull, desperately wishing somebody would take me to an amusement park. Later, when I had my own kids, summer vacation caused terrible anxiety as I did everything in my power to avoid taking my kids to an amusement park. Now, as an empty nester, summer causes anxiety because I finally have time to myself so I feel like I need to squeeze enjoyment out of these summer days because death is at my door. It’s terrible.

I do enjoy late summer sunsets. Except for the mosquitos. And, honestly, how many sunsets are you really going to watch? Even one? Are you even going to sit out on the grass and watch the sun go down one time while getting bitten half to death by malaria-infested bugs? No, you’re not. The idea of summer sunsets is great but lots of things are great ideas that aren’t great in practice. Like anal.

The worst. (Photo by Nattipat Vesvarute on Unsplash)

Summer fruit! I love a good nectarine, grapes, ripe watermelon. Yum. A burger from the grill? Fabulous. A short canoe trip on a still summer lake. Terrific. Taking a nap on a hammock with a paperback cracked open on your chest. The sound of baseball on the radio. A car ride to an out-of-the-way ice cream stand. A summer thunderstorm that has everybody dodging the first fat raindrops while running inside to watch the lightning show. Drinking a beer on the porch. Summer does have its moments.

Just not enough.

For those wondering, here is the correct ranking of the seasons:

1.    Fall

2.    Spring

3.    Winter

4.    Summer